Not an American, but an eminently average family-- the pen below I got from my wife, who got it from her father, who had it in his toy chest in the late 1940s or very early 1950s. Sturdy, not unattractive, with a steel point.

[quote name='nxn96' timestamp='1289929038' post='1753964']Another thought along this line: desk pens. Back in the era when more jobs involved a fixed desk at a fixed location, a desk pen in a holder on a heavy base was a popular item from the major pen manufacturers. Esterbrook seems to have been a big player in this market, including desk pens with a chain for public/commercial use and combination dip-pens with combination inkwells. Parker and Sheaffer were large players too, but similar to as Parker51 noted, a lot of these pens had a brass plate attached to commemorate a special occasion.

Again, it speaks to what writing instruments people carried and where/when people needed to use an ink pen.[/quot

As a child in the early to mid 1950s, I remember seeing what I now can identify as Esterbrook desk pens in "eight ball" holders on the desks of middle-grade U.S. military officers in Europe and in the States. Don't know whether the big cheeses .... colonels and generals ... had those or something classier. Also don't know whether they were government issue, but I suspect they may have been. The only fountain pen in our house (1950s-60s) was an old vacuumatic Parker 51, teal-colored, my dad kept in a drawer. Never saw him use it. Wish it hadn't gotten lost. His mother used a 51 for decades ... she may have given it to him.

I believe there were Doctor and Nurse pen sets from Shaeffer also and the pens were white. I think one pen like holder with a clip stored a thermometer for checking the patients temperature though I am curious how it was cleaned between uses.

Bob Maguire (Plse call me "M or Mags" like my friends do...)I use a RIM PlayBook and a fountain pen.

I graduated from high school in 1976 as well. While I remember seeing desks at various schools with inkwell holes drilled in them, I don't ever recall using a fountain pen in school. (I finished grade 6 in the spring of 1970)

I do remember buying a very inexpensive Sheaffer with cartridges, it was bubble packed on cardboard-hang tag style. Might have even bought it at a 7-11. I also remember ink everywhere - whether as a kid who just didn't get how to do it or what. I was probably 8-10 years old.

Brad "Words are, of course, the most powerful drug used by mankind" - Rudyard Kipling

"None of us can have as many virtues as the fountain-pen, or half its cussedness; but we can try." - Mark Twain

I'm not sure about the pens themselves but many professions preferred certain types of nibs for their writing needs.

Many companies (including Esterbrook, Parker and Sheaffer) produced accountant, manifold, clerical/secretarial, bookkeeping and shorthand nibs that were designed for office workers, salesmen, accountants, book and records keepers and secretaries.

I believe we were "average." We certainly weren't affluent, nor were we poor.

When I was a tyke in the latev'50s, my mother used what I now know as a Parker '51. My father used a different pen, with an exposed nib. I remember asking my mother about the difference and she would say her pen had a nib, too it was just hidden back up under the plastic. My pre-school mind never figured out how they got that big nib (like my father's) to fit up inside that little hole on the "51."

About the way they were used. I remember my mother using her pen frequently. Maybe not for grocery lists, and such, but she used it for letters, writing checks, anything that wasn't just a note to be tossed in the trash within the next day or so. I didn't see my father use his much because he wasn't home during the day. I also remember store clerks using fountain pens. Again, I think they used them for things like recording sales, and so on, not for quick notes.